"Most people consider it roughly unnatural for other opposing
viewpoints to prevail. I, on the contrary, am surprised when someone
agrees with me".

"Because
the first thing that a theory, which wants to be scientific, must offer, is an
explanation exactly of those phenomena which prima facie contradict it".

"The proclamation of human rights today is connected with - and in the
future it will be connected even more closely - with the once explicit
desire that one's dear fellow man should sit in his own country and
enjoy his human dignity over there".

“[the philosophers'] position is in part tragic and in part comical
because they themselves cannot transubstantiate… power into their own
social domination and, correspondingly, they dream that rulers will
one day philosophise rather than philosophers prevail”.

"Speaking in jest, I confess to friends that, since reading pleases me
so much, I should have never made writing my profession, and Ι
recollect with envy Lord Henry in "The Portrait of Dorian Gray", who said that he likes reading so much that it does not give him any motive to write books himself".

"Something which for someone is the future of humanity, can for someone else be the neighbourhood bakerwoman; and whilst someone who at the level of values promotes humanity and its felicitous future but in reality lives for his bank account, someone else can commit murder or suicide on account of the neighbourhood bakerwoman".

"Humans will be called "humans", precisely like lions are called lions
and mice - mice, without any other ethnic, national or ideological
differentiation. It might appear to be a paradox, but it is true that a
human separated himself from all the other animal species precisely
because he was not only a human without any other predicate".

“ultimate, not
further reducible, reality consists of existences, individuals or groups, which
struggle for their self-preservation and, together with that of necessity also
for the extension of their power, that is why they meet as friends or foes and
change friends or foes according to the needs of the striving after
self-preservation and striving after [the extension of their] power”.

"If the same Western Powers, which in 1919 dismissed Japan's request and did not want to enshrine the equality of races in the Treaty of Versailles, in 1996 try hard to achieve understanding of foreign cultures, this does not necessarily mean that progress in understanding has occurred. However, it does indicate a dramatic shift in the (world) balance of power".

"The de-ideologisation and the merging of politics with the economy, in
the final analysis, mean that in the future conflicts will be
conducted for tangible material goods, without notable ideological
mediations. Thus, to be precise, we should characterise the end of
ideologies as a partial return to the animal kingdom. Whether it is
attractive and desirable for the farewelling of Utopia to reach up to
there will remain a matter of taste".

"Just as the philosopher [Kant] believed, it is exactly the "mixing" and
"merging" of peoples which puts peace in danger. But even if the
democratic peoples remained separate like good neighbours, as Kant
preferred, again they would not be lacking in war-mongering arguments
in the event they are needed. Nobody will deny the principle that
"democracies do not wage war against each other" - only that he will
add that the opponent is not a "genuine democrat"".

"... think
historically, the answers to historical problems are not found in constructed
theory, but on the contrary, the answers to theoretical problems are found in
history. Those who choose theory over history do it not because they move in
higher spheres, as they themselves often think, but out of intellectual(-spiritual)
indolence; because any theory whatsoever is infinitely more simple than any
historical situation whatsoever".

"just as conservatives have never satisfactorily been able to explain how
revolutionaries were capable of unhinging (or turning upside down) an entire “natural”
or even “divine” order, and consequently prove themselves to be stronger than this entire “natural”
or “divine” order, so too the revolutionary natural law advocates have hitherto
not given a convincing answer to the question as to how nature’s commands could
be infringed so persistently by suppression, violence or alienation".

"In
order to avoid hysteria in the face of full and irrevocable death, the hysteria
of eschatology was legitimised world-theoretically. Whoever learns to live
without express and tacit eschatologies and without ethicisms as
these eschatologies' subsitutes, should also learn to die, totally and
irrevocably, with serenity and cheerfulness (of the soul). If one can be taught this supreme lesson somewhere, it is from classical antiquity,
which ignored the straight line with the auspicious endpoint in order to fix
itself on the observing and the living of the eternal
cycle".

"...however a substantial contribution to the knowledge of human affairs requires a total existential commitment, the
vigilant observation of concrete situations of living people, and an unstoppable
distillation of observations with relentless reflection, which does not retreat before any bias and does not fear clashing with anyone and anything. One could call this stance
an ethic (it is certainly a form of internal asceticism), however it does
not have any relation with ethics as a norm of social behaviour; on the
contrary, it can conflict head on with such a norm".

"The actual events in history are acted out, nonetheless, beyond the polemical slogans, even though the preachers and users of these slogans believe in a necessary relation between themselves and the historical becoming. On the other hand however, this [historical] becoming is promoted exactly by those forces (power or energies) which set the polemical slogans free. In this respect, a condition of effective historical action consists in that one does not know what one is doing - and also, that one theoreticises this ignorance of his with all argumentative arts (or skills)".

"Of course, the garrulous and lachrymose pseudo-humanism that
characterises public discourse in the West does not mean any tangible
disposition for drastic world-wide redistribution of material
prosperity. On the other hand, the extremely dangerous paradox of the
planetary situation means that even “just” solutions such as
self-denial without historical precedent would not offer a long-term
way out. If the wealth e.g. of 800 million is divided amongst six
billion, everyone will simply become a brother in poverty – conversely:
if a Chinese, Indian and African were to consume per capita as much raw
material and as much energy as a North American, that could entail
ecological collapse".

".... Also on this point, of course, there is no gain in knowledge, but a rectilinear
return to the thoughts world (or ideological universe) of early liberalism.
Because the world-historical perspective of a permanent replacement of war with
trade was founded already in the 18th century through the assumption
that only calculus (i.e. calculation) directed by interests, whose prototype
lies in economic activity, by virtue of this assumption, disciplines the
“passions”, which exactly leave (or have nothing to do with) the concept of
(self-)interest, and consequently rationalises (i.e. organises or systematises)
social behaviour in its entirety. We know what has happened since the 18th
century".

"If value-freedom
could be described at all as a value, then this would only be possible in the
methodological (not ethical) sense, and only with regard to the activity of
science – of course if, and in so far, it can be empirically proven that
value-free science is cognitively the most fertile....whereas, however,
psychological and moral stances are connected of necessity with certain
content, which turns against other content (e.g. tolerance against intolerance),
value freedom constitutes a method which must be free of a certain
psychological content, exactly because it makes the claim of understanding all
psychological and all moral contents and alternatively of being able to adopt
(or appropriate) those contents. On the basis of the principle of value
freedom, it cannot be decided whether scepticism and tolerance are preferable
to blind and intolerant belief".

"There are no ideas. There are only humanexistences in concrete situations, which act and react in their specific wayon each and every respective occasion; one of these specific waysconsists, in accordance with standard terminology, in thinking up orappropriating ideas. Ideas do not come into contact with one another, butonly human existences come into contact with one another, which insideof organised societies must act in the name of ideas; combinations ofideas are likewise the work of human existences, which, when they applythemselves to this work, startfrom their own relationship with otherexistences; and, finally, ideas are not defeated nor do they win, but theirvictory or their defeat stands symbolically for the predominance or thesubjugation of certain human existences.As one can see, the centuries-long predominance of idealistic normativism (and every normativismcontainsessential idealistic elements, even when for polemical reasons itcomes on the scenewhile flying the flag of materialism),forcesustowardsthe rediscovery and renewed emphasising ofbanaltruths-oftruths, which in a very general form could possibly today be recognisedby very many people, but whose logical consequences must meet with theresistance of every normativistic thought, that is, every objectiviseddecision".

"In other words: the complexity of the social makes the unintended and unexpected overall consequences of collective action
more likely; the said complexity of the social intensifies the effect of the
heterogony of ends. This effect was traditionally considered from the point of
view of the invisible hand, whereby (even) individual irrationalisms bring
about, through their interweaving, a rational collective outcome. The reverse
of that, however, can likewise happen, i.e. the sum of the partial
rationalities can bring forth an irrational overall result. The “knowledgeable society”
can only be constantly reproduced when the subjective expectations on the whole
are satisfied, not only as to the mode of behaviour of each and every
respective partner in interaction, but also as to the “system’s” overall performance.
If there is a situation in which indeed mutual expectations are fulfilled, but
the expected overall result of collective action fails to materialise, this
means for a highly complex society, the state of affairs of absolute bafflement
(or helplessness). Because the Archimedean point at which one could be in a
position to reverse the trend is buried sometime (or other) somewhere (or
other) in the thicket of complexity. Either, that is, highly complex society
must forever secure for itself the material and other preconditions of its
reproduction, or it must end in a historically unprecedented catastrophe".

"The proposition that man’s nature is culture,
actually means that man, under the pressure of (his) nature, had to become a
being of culture, and that the voice of (his) nature is therefore to continue
to be heard in all its tones and nuances in culture; man is just as little free
to selectively treat (or deal with) culture as he was in primeval times free to
stand still in a nature before culture, or as he is nowadays free to undo culture.
The culture of man is therefore just as much nature as his nature is culture.
And this fact must, social-ontologically, be meant (or thought of)
together with the fact of society, which is equally old and original as man and
culture, actually, the fact of society illustrates nothing other than the
inseparability of man and culture. Man and culture are mediated via the social
relation and via the political (i.e. that which is between man and culture is
mediated via the social relation and via the political; thereby, man develops
as a being of culture and puts himself in a position to not only historicise
his own, but also external nature. The becoming (or series of
events) in external nature indeed does not change in its law bindedness
(determinism or law-based necessity), but the becoming in external nature’s
effects (or consequences) with regard to the human collective depend henceforth
on the culture of this same human collective. Still further: the structure of
social cohesion and of social conditions (or circumstances) is not least of all
determined by each and every respective outcome of the struggle of the human
genus (i.e. race) against external nature. This great truth, which we owe to
Marx, has never been so topical as today, when the (at least potential) overcoming
of the age-old shortage of goods by means of rapid technical (i.e.
technological) progress set in motion historically unprecedented changes (or
transformations) of a planetary extent. However, precisely these changes (and
transformations) allow us, on the other hand, to recognise with increasing
clarity the embedding of culture in nature".

"One
would supposedly not go wrong with the assumption that the factor
“communication” (in the broader sense) would then gain the upper hand in the
social perception vis-à-vis the factor “action” (in the narrower sense) if
industry and agriculture were so productive that they only had to make use of
the labour of a minority of the population, while the majority would carry out
its labour (work) mainly via the exchange of signs and symbols (to say nothing
of the increasing penetration of the production process itself by the
communicative-informative factor). “Communication” becomes autonomous, in other
words, ideationally vis-à-vis “acting (i.e. action)” in the same sense and to
the same degree as fewer and fewer people produce what they consume, and as a
result the production of goods for the most part is covered up or is even
absorbed by symbolic exchange (exchange of information and money, but also of
services, which can be perceived as symbolic interaction). Consequently the
impression comes into being that production or acting (i.e. action) mean very
little and exchange or communication very much. However, it is here a matter of
an optical illusion. Because the surplus of communication or exchange is
reduced to a completely particular constitution (composition or texture) of
action or of production, and under given circumstances the said surplus of
communication or exchange must be produced so that action or production can be
developed: e.g. without mass consumption, there is no mass production. As the
exchange network of modern technicised societies would have to become much more
wide-meshed should the production of goods suffer serious setbacks, so too the
hard core of acting (i.e. action) – if one may say so – would put its narrower
communicative aspect in the shade, if communication ground to a halt. That
should mean that the communication process (or communicative event) as a whole
unfolds against the background and under the influence of that hard core, just
as without the near or far presence of tangible goods, exchange values
eventually become fictive and uninteresting. Communication theoreticians of an
ethical-normative or cybernetic mould, however, place no particular value on
such considerations. They internalise mass democracy’s criteria of perception
and at the same time contribute their own criteria of perception for the
theoretical underpinning of mass democracy’s notions of harmony, while they
reduce the real conflicts of action to obstacles to communication".

"This
becomes more understandable in light of our ascertainment that every
normification (i.e. normative standardisation) has its two sides, i.e. its
constraints, and, its free space(s) [for individual action] or room to move.
The image of “civilised” and rational-objective man above all “primitivisms”, who
in accordance with the view of the evolutionists of differentiation is supposed
to formulate and carry out the normifications of highly complex “knowledgeable
society”, formally (i.e. in terms of form) corresponds with the ideal type ofhighly technicised (i.e. technologically
advanced or hyperdeveloped) and highly rationalised (i.e. highly organised or
systematised) processes in industry and administration. Such processes however
make up only one side of social life in Western mass democracy. The other side,
that of mass consumption, is connected with psychological and ethically very
different stances and modes of behaviour – although, both aforementioned sides
are equally indispensable for mass democracy’s continued existence, and they
must compete and co-exist simultaneously with each other inside of society as
well as inside of the individual psyche. If industrial mass production and
administration require the activation of an impersonal instrumental
rationality, then mass consumption favours, on the contrary, the
individualistic-hedonistic ethic(s) of immediate (or direct) pleasure (or
enjoyment) and generally of “self-realisation”. On the basis of the mass
consumption of material and intellectual(-spiritual) goods, and against the
background of world-theoretical and ethical pantheism, all sorts of
irrationalisms, which spellbind all the more people, the more increased productivity
decreases the number of those directly participating in technical-rational
processes, come into being and thrive. The asymmetry between the “rationality”
of technology (technique) and production, and ideological-world-theoretical “irrationality”,
does not of course constitute a specific feature (or characteristic) of
mass-producing and mass-consuming mass democracy, even if the said mass
democracy has been connected here with absolutely contrary content(s): whereas
in societies in which the shortage of goods held sway, the “irrational” as a
rule legitimised ascetic virtues and social hierarchies, the “irrational” in a
society, which for the first time in history has basically overcome the
shortage of goods, promotes hedonistic and individualistic or egalitarian
notions and stances. Nevertheless, from the point of view of our formulation of
the question (i.e. examination of the problem), not this specific contrast, but
the structural commonality is more important. Pre-modern societies also handled
technology (technique) and production on the basis of the instrumental
rationality of means and end(s) (the procession (or litany) and the prayer for
rain did not mean that one had not otherwise done all that appeared expedient
for a good yield (or harvest) through the application of existing empirical
findings). But instrumental rationality at this level did not in the least
constitute the method of thought which shaped the general world theory (i.e.
world view). There are no grounds for the assumption that this will now be
fundamentally different. Against the background of the same industry and
technology (technique), a number of “rationalisms” and “irrationalisms” are
today, as in the past, possible; and the social-ontological or anthropological
framework is expected, as a result of new technical (and or technological)
developments, to change just as little as through the invention of typography
and of ballistics at the threshold of the New Times".

"The seemingly
disarming thesis that the politicisation of a complex modern society would
destroy this society, basically constitutes a banality, which applies to all
societies and with regard to every subsystem (or part system). No society could
centre on a single activity, entirely regardless of each and every respective
historically determined degree of interweaving of individual social activities
with one another. The dogged effort at centring social life on aesthetic,
religious, scientific or economic activity would not have a less devastating
effect than the consistent claim of a monopoly of politics. The specific
political point of view concerns the manner (or method) of the subsystems’ (or
part systems’) coherence, not necessarily the manner (or method) as to how
inside of each and every resepective subsystem (or part system) the
corresponding social activity is carried out. So-called “totalitarian”
attempts, of religious or other inspiration, at comprehensively subjugating the
various social activities to one sole point of view, can indeed lead to the
reinforced (intensified or increased) control of man, but not to the abolition
of the specific character of the corresponding activities. Even a deeply
religious society must cultivate its fields, and it cannot replace tillage (or
agriculture) with worship and prayer, even if prayers and ritual acts would constantly
accompany agro-economic activity as such. The same applies to the other social
activities, to say nothing of the personal activities, and that is why no
“totalitarianism” and no “despotism” can be as comprehensive as they perhaps
wanted to be in respect of their claim, or as they often appear to be in
demonising descriptions. Over and above that, it is a purely fictive notion to thus
interpret the evolutionistic schema of differentiation as though in the
“pre-modern” past the lack of differentiation of the subsystems (or part
systems) enabled a primacy of the political which is no longer applicable. In
the hitherto described basic constellation, hardly anything has changed through
the centuries despite the (great) variety of institutional forms. An “oriental
despotism (i.e. despotic regime)” could and wanted to influence the production
method (mode or manner of production), or the patriarchal institutions of the
village community living under it, only within narrow limits, whereas the
theoretical precedence of “politics”, understood in Aristotelian terms, in the
European Middle Ages did not at all exclude feudal fragmentation and local
autonomy; phenomena of a refeudalisation on a highly technicised (i.e.
high-technology) basis in modern mass democracies have just as little to do
with a drastic change (or transformation) in the status and in the function of
politics, butthey interrelate with
economic and social developments, which pose the question of the cohesion of
society on a new basis. However, this question remains, and with it politics
remains too, particularly if no-one can know whether the material preconditions
of the modern processes of differentiation will survive (endure, persist or
remain) in the future or not".

"Now, the
self-understanding of a social formation appears as objective self-knowledge
and knowledge of history only so long as the social formation in question is on
the up and up and clears its adversaries out of the way. That is today the case
with mass democracy. However, precisely at its planetary high point, its own
contradictions, in fact its explosive potentialities, which were intimated at
the beginning of this chapter, become increasingly apparent.
Social-theoretically, mass democracy’s contradictions and explosive
potentialities are of importance because they make known in themselves the
topicality of the classical question formulations. The increasing complexity in
terms of detail brings about a reduction of the great aporias (i.e. doubts,
contradictions or paradoxes) to formulae of almost archaic simplicity. After
the decline of bourgeois anthropocentrism, and under the conditions of
planetarily unfolded (or developed) highly technicised (i.e. technologically
advanced) mass democracy, the question regarding man’s essence (or nature) and
possibilities is posed even more directly and more acutely than at the
threshold of the European New Times. On the one hand, the image of
man is unified like never before by means of the henceforth dense (or compact) existing
side by side, or existing inside of one another, cultures, nations and races,
while at the same time the waning significance of historical and social
attributes for the determination of human identity, as a result of the
spreading of universalistic ideologies, paradoxically but logically reduces man
to his constitution (composition, texture or nature) as biological being; on
the other hand, this man reduced to his mere humanness (or human quality), that
is, man in general and as such, stands across from nature, he must in a time of
highly demographic and ecological tension measure his powers against nature’s
powers. The question about the animal, which creates tools on a planet
populated by billions which has already become narrow (i.e. cramped), is posed
no less acutely and no less elementarily than before a few millions of years
ago in the African savannas when hordes of animals [or (proto)humans] wandered
around. And likewise the other great social-ontological question must appear on
the horizon as acute and elementary, that great social-ontological question
regarding social cohesion and social order, if namely the relations between
humans reach such a density and intensity that the boundaries of every known
political unit (unity or entity) from the past will become full of holes or
even burst open".